Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“An Omnipotent Creator Who could make such a painful world is to me sometimes as hard to believe in as to believe in blind matter behind everything.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
Sir Thomas Wyatt, born about 1503 and dead on 11 October 1542, stands at the beginning of the English Renaissance lyric. He was not the first English poet to write about love, loss, faith, or fortune, but he altered the sound, scale, and inwardness of English poetry. In his hands, verse became a place where private desire could collide with public danger, where a courtier could confess exhaustion without naming its c…
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
